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Monday, February 9, 2015

Soccer Stadium Stampede Kills at Least 25 in Egypt (JMD quoted in The New York Times)

Soccer Stadium Stampede Kills at Least 25 in Egypt

CAIRO — At least 25 soccer fans
died on Sunday in a confrontation with the police at the gates of a stadium,
morgue officials said, in the latest flash of violence to confront the
military-backed government as it struggles to restore security 18 months after
coming to power.

The death toll was expected to
rise.

The hard-core fans known as Ultras
are proud of their long history of battling the police and they often formed
the front lines of the violent protests that followed the Arab Spring revolt
here four years ago.

In February 2012, a brawl between
rival groups of fans at a match in the city of Port Said killed at least 70
people. The Egyptian authorities became so worried about their inability to
control the crowds that for the past three years they have banned fans from
soccer games, forcing teams to play in virtually empty stadiums.

The violence on Sunday was set off
in part by an attempt to begin loosening those restrictions, allowing the sale
of just 5,000 tickets to the public, according to reports in the official state
news media.

At the start of the game, around 6
p.m., thousands of ticketless fans of a popular team, Zamalek, reportedly tried
to enter the stadium anyway. “The Zamalek fans tried to get in by force, and we
had to prevent them from damaging public property,” the Interior Ministry said
in a statement reported by the state news media.

Later, the news media reported
that police officials attributed the deaths to “a stampede, when more than
6,000 of the Zamalek Club fans tried to break in,” with “many falling over each
other.”

“Because of the stampede, some
choked and died from asphyxiation, while the rest died from being trampled,”
the police said, according to the website of Al Ahram, the flagship state
newspaper. “Some of them had been sleeping on the ground in front of the bus
that was transporting the players to the club, in an attempt to stop some of
the players from entering the stadium,” the statement said.

The fans, known as the Zamalek
White Knights, said in multiple separate accounts that the police
had set off the stampede by firing tear gas into a crowd of thousands of fans
already jammed into a narrow, enclosed space.

One Zamalek fan, Abdel Rahman Ben
Kamal, wrote in an account on his Facebook page that as many as 8,000 fans were
waiting in a fenced-in corridor about 12 feet wide when without warning
security forces began firing tear gas.

“The smell of the gas burned the
face,” he wrote. “People fell to the ground and they were stepped on, and I was
one of them, but there were people below me.” He wrote that he had recited his
last prayers and saw at least 20 people die.

“I swear by God we will get back
their rights even if it takes seas of blood,” he added.

A well-known White Knights leader
using the online alias Yassir Miracle wrote on the Internet that the police had
let about 5,000 fans into an enclosed corridor and then closed the barricades
behind them.

“They shot tear gas at us; people
died from the gas and the pushing, but they had shut the exit,” he wrote,
adding that the riot police “were searching the corpses and the people who had
just collapsed and collecting the wallets and money.”

“Ambulances arrived after one
hour,” he wrote, “and the police continued to run after us and shoot us with
tear gas and bird shot around the stadium in the desert.”

The fleeing fans, he said, were
unable to enlist passing drivers to help carry away their dead. “There are five
bodies, including one child, and the cars are not stopping so we can move
them,” he wrote, posting pictures of a few of the dead or injured.

A fan identifying himself as Nader
el-Sayed wrote that police officers at checkpoints were arresting anyone
wearing a shirt that said Zamalek or Ultras.

“A 7-year-old boy fell from the
tear gas; people stepped over him running away, and the ambulance is saying he
is dead,” Mr. Sayed wrote. He posted a picture of a stampede, writing, “Tear
gas was fired at us from behind at this moment, and scores of people were
falling.”

The deaths Sunday night followed
the killing of about 20 civilians two weeks ago in clashes with police officers
around the Jan. 25 anniversary of the start of the Arab Spring revolt.

James M. Dorsey, author of a
widely followed blog about Middle East soccer,
said the riot on Sunday night was a troubling setback for President Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi, who claimed to restore order after the military takeover he led
in 2013.

“It becomes increasingly difficult
to argue that you have re-established security and law and order when you can’t
afford to open the stadiums,” he said, noting that for any authoritarian
government “the soccer stadium is one of the few public spaces they cannot
control in absolute terms.”

The game, held at a stadium owned
by the military in an outer area of Cairo called the Fifth Settlement, was
nonetheless played to completion. Zamalek tied ENPPI, the Engineering for the
Petroleum and Process Industries club, with one goal each, the state news media
reported.

A version of this
article appears in print on February 9, 2015, on page A6 of the New York
edition with the headline: Soccer Stadium Stampede Kills at Least 25 in
Egypt . Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile